BlockTime — The Recurring Task Manager That Stays in Your Day Without Nuking Your Calendar
Every recurring task manager on earth either forces you into a calendar slot or gives you a floating task that drifts into tomorrow forever. BlockTime lets you define daily time blocks — 9am: deep work, 2pm: admin — and pins recurring tasks inside those blocks without creating calendar events. Your calendar stays clean. Your routine stays locked.
Difficulty
beginner
Category
Productivity
Market Demand
High
Revenue Score
7/10
Platform
Web App
Vibe Code Friendly
No
Hackathon Score
6/10
Validated by Real Pain
— sourced from real community discussions
Task managers force recurring tasks into calendar slots or leave them as floating items without a fixed daily time anchor, breaking structured routines for ops-focused users.
What is it?
Product managers and ops leads on Reddit and Twitter consistently complain that Asana and ClickUp recurring tasks either auto-schedule into calendar slots they didn't ask for or float as unanchored items that get ignored. The real need is a structured daily rhythm that lives outside calendar sync — fixed time blocks with repeating tasks inside them. BlockTime solves this with a day-view grid of user-defined time blocks, each containing recurring task slots that repeat on a chosen cadence. No Google Calendar integration required — the blocks are just named time windows, not events. Charge $15/month after a 14-day free trial. Buildable in 2 weeks because the UI is a simple grid and the data model is just tasks plus block definitions.
Why now?
Post-pandemic structured async work culture has created massive demand for routine tools that don't bleed into calendar apps. ClickUp and Asana recurring task threads on Reddit hit peak frustration volume in the past 12 months with no targeted solution shipping.
- ▸Named time block creator with start time and color label — no calendar event generated.
- ▸Recurring task assignment to blocks with daily, weekly, or custom cadence using date-fns.
- ▸Day-view dashboard showing today's blocks with task checkboxes that reset on schedule.
- ▸Block template library so users can share or reuse their daily routine structure.
Target Audience
Product managers, ops leads, and solo operators with structured daily routines — approximately 500k people paying for Asana, ClickUp, or Todoist who post about recurring task frustration on Reddit monthly.
Example Use Case
Jake, a product manager at a 20-person startup, defines a 9am deep-work block with daily tasks like 'review Slack overnight' and a 2pm admin block with 'update roadmap doc' recurring on Mondays — none of these appear in Google Calendar, his blocks just show up every day like clockwork.
User Stories
- ▸As a product manager, I want to assign recurring daily tasks to named time blocks, so that my routine is structured without polluting my Google Calendar.
- ▸As an ops lead, I want my recurring tasks to reset automatically each morning, so that I never manually duplicate tasks across days again.
- ▸As a solo operator, I want to save my block structure as a reusable template, so that I can restart my routine after holidays without rebuilding from scratch.
Done When
- ✓Block creation: done when user clicks New Block, sets name and time, saves, and the block appears in the day-view grid without any calendar event being created.
- ✓Recurring task: done when user adds a daily task to a block, checks it, and sees it unchecked and ready again the following morning.
- ✓Auth: done when user clicks magic link email, lands back in the app, and their blocks persist across sessions.
- ✓Payment: done when Stripe checkout completes, user is redirected to dashboard, and the block creation limit increases immediately.
Is it worth building?
$15/month x 100 users = $1,500 MRR at month 3. $15/month x 500 users = $7,500 MRR at month 8. Assumes 3% conversion from Reddit and ProductHunt traffic.
Unit Economics
CAC: $12 via Reddit community outreach. LTV: $180 (12 months at $15/month). Payback: 1 month. Gross margin: 91%.
Business Model
SaaS subscription
Monetization Path
14-day free trial, $15/month solo plan, $39/month for team shared block templates.
Revenue Timeline
First dollar: week 2 via direct outreach beta. $1k MRR: month 3. $5k MRR: month 9.
Estimated Monthly Cost
Vercel: $20, Supabase: $25, Stripe fees: $15, Resend: $10. Total: ~$70/month at launch.
Profit Potential
Full-time viable at $5k-$8k MRR.
Scalability
Medium-high — team plans, Notion sync, and mobile PWA are natural V2 expansions.
Success Metrics
Week 1: 200 waitlist signups from Reddit. Week 3: 30 paid users. Month 2: 70% week-4 retention.
Launch & Validation Plan
Post a Figma prototype in r/productivity and r/projectmanagement asking 'would you pay $15/month for this UX' before writing code.
Customer Acquisition Strategy
First customer: DM 20 active commenters in r/productivity threads complaining about ClickUp recurring tasks, offer 6 months free for weekly feedback. Ongoing: Reddit, ProductHunt, Twitter productivity niche, SEO targeting 'recurring tasks without calendar sync'.
What's the competition?
Competition Level
Medium
Similar Products
Sunsama ($20/month, calendar-native, too complex), Reclaim.ai (auto-schedules into calendar, opposite of what users want), TickTick (recurring tasks exist but no block concept) — none offer calendar-decoupled time blocks.
Competitive Advantage
Only tool that explicitly decouples recurring tasks from calendar events — positioning is the moat, not the tech.
Regulatory Risks
Low regulatory risk. GDPR data deletion endpoint required for EU users.
What's the roadmap?
Feature Roadmap
V1 (launch): block creation, recurring tasks, day-view, daily reset cron. V2 (month 2-3): block templates, weekly digest email, streak tracker. V3 (month 4+): team shared blocks, Notion sync, mobile PWA.
Milestone Plan
Phase 1 (Week 1-2): schema, block CRUD, day-view UI ships. Phase 2 (Week 3-4): recurrence logic, auth, Stripe billing live. Phase 3 (Month 2): cron reset, streak, ProductHunt launch.
How do you build it?
Tech Stack
Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, Resend — build with Lovable for the day-grid UI, Cursor for task recurrence logic, v0 for block editor components
Suggested Frameworks
Next.js App Router, Supabase Realtime, date-fns
Time to Ship
2 weeks
Required Skills
Next.js, Supabase, date-fns for recurrence logic, basic drag-and-drop with dnd-kit.
Resources
Supabase docs, dnd-kit docs, date-fns recurrence patterns, Stripe billing quickstart.
MVP Scope
app/page.tsx (day-view dashboard), app/blocks/page.tsx (block editor), app/api/tasks/route.ts (CRUD + recurrence), app/api/blocks/route.ts (block CRUD), lib/db/schema.ts (Drizzle: blocks, tasks, users), lib/recurrence.ts (date-fns cadence logic), components/BlockGrid.tsx (day grid), components/TaskRow.tsx (checkbox row), .env.example
Core User Journey
Sign up -> create first time block -> add recurring task to block -> check task on day 1 -> return next morning and see it reset -> upgrade to paid.
Architecture Pattern
User defines block -> stored in Supabase blocks table -> task assigned to block with recurrence rule -> daily cron resets completed tasks per cadence -> day-view fetches today's block+task state -> checkbox updates task completion in Supabase.
Data Model
User has many Blocks. Block has many Tasks. Task has one RecurrenceRule (cadence, lastReset, nextDue). CompletionLog records daily check history per Task.
Integration Points
Supabase for database and auth, Stripe for billing, Resend for daily digest emails, Vercel for hosting, Vercel Cron for daily task reset.
V1 Scope Boundaries
V1 excludes: Google Calendar integration, team shared blocks, mobile app, drag-and-drop task reordering, Slack notifications.
Success Definition
A paying stranger signs up, builds their daily block routine in under 10 minutes, checks tasks for 5 consecutive days, and upgrades without any founder contact.
Challenges
The hardest non-technical problem is convincing users this is different from a calendar app — positioning must be 'it lives beside your calendar, not inside it.' Churn risk is high if users don't build a daily habit within the first week.
Avoid These Pitfalls
Do not build calendar sync in V1 — it contradicts the core value prop and doubles build time. Do not allow unlimited block creation on free tier or users never upgrade. Finding first 10 paying users requires 3x more community time than building the feature.
Security Requirements
Supabase Auth with Google OAuth and magic link, RLS on all user-scoped tables, rate limit API at 100 req/min per IP, GDPR deletion endpoint.
Infrastructure Plan
Vercel for Next.js hosting and Cron jobs, Supabase for Postgres and auth, GitHub Actions for CI, Sentry for errors, Vercel Analytics for traffic.
Performance Targets
150 DAU at launch, 3,000 req/day. API under 300ms. Page load under 1.5s. Block state cached client-side with SWR.
Go-Live Checklist
- ☐Security audit complete.
- ☐Stripe payment tested end-to-end.
- ☐Sentry error tracking live.
- ☐Vercel cron reset tested across timezone edge cases.
- ☐Custom domain with SSL active.
- ☐Privacy policy and terms published.
- ☐8 beta users confirmed daily usage for one week.
- ☐Rollback plan documented.
- ☐ProductHunt and Reddit r/productivity posts drafted.
First Run Experience
On first run: three pre-seeded block templates (Morning Routine 9am, Deep Work 10am, Admin 3pm) are visible with example recurring tasks inside each. User can immediately check tasks and see the day-view without signing in. No manual config required: demo mode uses localStorage, sign-up persists data to Supabase.
How to build it, step by step
1. Define Drizzle schema: users, blocks (name, startTime, color), tasks (blockId, title, cadence, lastReset), completionLogs. 2. Run npx create-next-app blocktime with TypeScript and Tailwind. 3. Build recurrence.ts with date-fns to compute nextDue and reset logic. 4. Create Supabase tables and enable RLS per user. 5. Build BlockGrid and TaskRow components using v0 day-view layout. 6. Wire block CRUD API routes with Supabase client. 7. Add Vercel Cron job that resets daily tasks at midnight per user timezone. 8. Add Supabase Auth magic link and Google OAuth. 9. Add Stripe $15/month checkout with feature gate on block count. 10. Verify: create a block, add a daily recurring task, check it, wait for cron, confirm it resets and streak increments.
Generated
May 21, 2026
Model
claude-sonnet-4-6
Disclaimer: Ideas on this site are AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies. Revenue estimates, market demand figures, and financial projections are illustrative assumptions only — not financial advice. Do your own research before making any business or investment decisions. Technology availability, pricing, and market conditions change rapidly; always verify details independently.